Thousands of enterprises rely on Apache Kafka, an open-source distributed event streaming platform, for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications. The Apache Kafka framework is a distributed Publish-Subscribe Messaging system based on Java and Scala that accepts Data Streams from several sources and provides real-time analysis of Big Data streams. It can scale up and down quickly and with little downtime. Kafka’s global appeal has developed as a result of its failure tolerance and little data redundancy. To learn Apache Kafka you can consult various sites.

Thousands of businesses, including more than 60% of the Fortune 100, use Kafka like Box, Goldman Sachs, Target, Cisco, Intuit, and others. Kafka is a well-known technology for enabling and growing companies. Firms can improve their data strategy and efficiency by using Kafka Event-Driven Architecture. Like in Amazon MSK, Amazon SNS is a pub/sub messaging service that can be used as an event-driven computing hub for AWS customers worldwide

Why Event-Driven Architecture

With the rise of Big Data and Cloud settings, an Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) is a microservices-based architecture paradigm that is becoming more common. This isn’t a random occurrence. EDA provides an effective method of linking microservices for developers, which can aid in the construction of future-proof systems. Furthermore, when combined with powerful streaming services like Apache Kafka, event-driven systems become more agile, resilient, and efficient than previous messaging approaches.

A change in the state of a significant business system is defined as an event. For example, someone may purchase goods, someone else may check-in for a flight, or a bus may be running late. And, if you think about it, events happen all the time, no matter what industry you’re in.

The value of events is that they describe behaviour as a series of related events. A stream is a term used to describe a series of related occurrences. Streams can be generated by an IoT device, a person accessing a website, database changes, or a variety of other sources.

When an event notification is issued, the system captures what happened (for example, a change in state has occurred) and waits to provide the response to whoever/whenever requested it. The application that received the message might either respond right away or wait till the state changes.

Components of Event-Driven Architecture

Real-time systems that demand you to act and respond to data changes and events in real-time use Event-Driven Architecture. This architecture is very useful for Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Let’s look at the main components that go into creating an Event-Driven Architecture.

• Event: A big change in the state of an object that occurs when users take action is referred to as an Event.

• Event Handler: An Event Handler is a software routine that handles the occurrence of an Event.

• The Event Loop: The Event Loop is in charge of the interaction between an Event and the Event Handler.

• Layers of Event Flow: The following are the logical layers that make up the event flow layer:

• Event Producer: Event Producers are in charge of detecting and producing events.
• Event Consumers: Event Consumers consume the events that the Event Producer generates.
• Event Bus: Event Bus is another name for Event Channel. It facilitates event transfer from the Event Generator to the Event Consumer.

Benefits of Event-Driven Architecture in Enhancing Business Using Apache Kafka

• STRUCTURED DEVELOPMENT:

Let’s pretend that order shipments are manually registered in our eCommerce software example. We now want to create a procedure that will automatically register these shipments utilising postal carriers’ APIs.

All we have to do with an event-driven architecture is establish a separate service that listens for order-created events. The service can then use the API provided by postal carriers to register the shipment and obtain a tracking number. Finally, the service can send out an order updated event with the tracking number included. With any chance, a notification service that listens for order update events and sends the tracking number to customers already exists.

Using an event-driven architecture can boost development efficiency dramatically, both in terms of speed and cost. This is due to the fact that all events are funnelled through a single event bus, which new services can easily connect to. Not only may services listen for certain events and activate new code as needed, but they can also push their own events to the event bus, allowing them to connect to other services indirectly.

This is considerably more efficient in terms of development than creating point-to-point interactions. Although an event-driven architecture may appear more complicated at first since most processes must begin and end with an event, it will be much easier to add to after your application is up and running than a standard monolith.

• BETTER EXPERIENCE OF THE USER

Improving the user experience of your application is essential if you want to boost client retention and lifetime value. Because it encourages you to think about and build around events, an event-driven architecture can be extremely useful to user experience. 

Let’s go again and talk about the eCommerce project. The user experience is greatly enhanced by using an event-driven architecture in conjunction with an event-driven notification service. The customer will always be up-to-date with their orders as long as we regularly update the event bus. If an ordered product is out of stock, for example, employees can be trained to label it as such in a web interface that is broadcast to the event bus. The user will receive an automatic message regarding their order thanks to the notification service.

• LOW COST

Your application’s operational costs can also be reduced by using an event-driven architecture. There’s no need for services to poll each other for status changes because events are pushed to them as they happen. This results in a large reduction in the number of calls made, which reduces bandwidth consumption and CPU utilisation, resulting in cheaper operational expenses. Additionally, individuals that use a third-party API gateway or proxy and are invoiced per-call will pay less.

When payment is completed, that business can send out an order paid event, immediately updating other portions of the application, thanks to an event-driven design. There’s no need to check the payment status of each order every few seconds this way. It may not seem important for a small-business eCommerce site, but enterprise-level eCommerce payments are really demanding. Fewer calls result from an event-driven architecture, resulting in lower operating expenses.

• DURABILITY

Kafka ensures long-term viability through replication.Your application will be more resilient if you use an event-driven architecture. If a service fails, it can restart and replay events from the event bus automatically. It can then update other services by pushing its own events into the stream. Sure, there may be some delays, but that’s still better than the application failing to respond to an event at all, as other architectures may do.

The fact that individual services are so loosely connected is another component of the resiliency feature of event-driven systems. Because services communicate with one another via an event bus rather than directly, one service’s failure does not always signal that others will as well.

Conclusion

Kafka is a messaging system that isn’t quite like the rest. It’s a suitable backbone for services to exchange and buffer events because it’s built as a distributed, scalable infrastructure component. The technology has a lot of distinct features, but the ones that stand out are its ability to scale, its ability to run continuously, and its ability to store datasets over time.